


My Little Mission

by p_unkmock



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cute, Ficlet, Fluff, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Secret Admirer, Short, Staring, Stucky secret santa, lowkey, you're my mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:26:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5411597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/p_unkmock/pseuds/p_unkmock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky was completely content with being invisible. But now that's all about to change when he notices a small gift show up on his desk...</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Little Mission

**Author's Note:**

> This is a british high school au. By Sixth Form i mean years 12 and 13, in other words, Bucky is 16 and Steve is 17.

Bucky was completely content with being invisible. With a small friendship group of three, he had everything he needed: someone to subtly copy homework from and another to rescue him from boring conversations. Natasha and Clint had been his closest and somewhat only friends for a few years now and it had made secondary school a heck lot easier. Another advantage of having so few friends was that it was a fewer number of people to come out about his sexuality to.

“That’s cool.” Clint replied when Bucky first told him he was gay. “Now let me just show you this prank video one more time before you go to lesson.”

That’s what Bucky liked about Clint, he would never force anything out of you. You could tell him that you have a massive secret that could be life changing and wouldn’t utter any word of question about it unless you wanted to share it. Conversations with him was like an escape for Bucky, a small moment where he didn’t have to worry about school or who he was and could just spend hours watching stupid cat videos.

“Well now that you’ve finally mentioned it, I noticed this guy in physics giving you the eye.” Natasha replied when Bucky first told her he was gay.

She claimed that she had known all along which relieved him, but at the same time made him anxious, wondering if anyone else had picked up on it. In a friendly way that Bucky appreciated, Nat said that she only knew because she’s actually had a meaningful conversation with him.   

 

To avoid the painful presence that was the majority of their year group, Bucky, Clint and Natasha always sat upstairs in the sixth form common room, where most of the year above were situated. There were still a few people in their year up there, but no one too aggravating. The three friends were lucky and managed to claim ‘the corner’ next to the bookcase of university leaflets, surrounding one computer, as their usual meeting spot.

“You would not believe what Mr Coulson made us do in history.” Clint was telling Bucky and Natasha as they sat in the corner on a Thursday afternoon during lunch. “Just because Banner told him at parents evening that when he does games we don’t actually learn anything, Coulson’s made the bullshit decision to make us copy out of the text book every lesson.” Clint held out his right hand, making his friends look at his reddening knuckles. “If my hand drops off I want a cool metal prosthetic okay? Like with flaming arrows on it or something!” From then on, Clint spent the rest of the lunch hour describing to them what his metal hand would look like and the advantages of having one. Whilst Nat was staring at her friend with a dopey smile on her face, her chin resting on the palms of her hands, Bucky had taken to look around at the other friendship groups that surrounded his own.

There were only two groups that he had paid enough attention towards to recognise the returning members: the group who would watch Minecraft gameplays and the group of students from the year above that Bucky had recognised a few from his form room. The latter consisted of four guys that seemed to be the ‘leaders’: Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Thor Odinson and Steve Rogers. Despite all four of them sitting around three computers, Bruce was the only one logged on, every now and then showing the others a newly released movie trailer or music video. Bucky had recognised most if not all of the videos they would watch, quickly realising that he had the same film and music taste as this group, but would often decide against approaching any of them on the matter. Tony always wore an expensive blazer over his plain t-shirt, not afraid to whip out the latest Apple product to show everyone; that often formed a crowd, of both women and men, lusting over the new tech and the owner. Thor, on the other hand, tended to take the socialising route to win people over, participating in idle chit chat with what seemed like someone new every day, but he never strayed far from his three close friends. Steve was the one Bucky found himself paying the closest attention too and often found himself tuning in when it was the blonde boy’s turn to tell a story and would end up laughing to himself. And sometimes, on quieter days, Bucky would result in taking frequent glances at Steve when he’s in the middle of a book Bucky knows he’s read a million times.

 

 

“He was pretty much a musical legend.” Bucky heard Sam Wilson say as he approached the locked door of his form room. The chocolate skinned boy had been talking to Peggy Carter, convincing her to listen to Marvin Gaye. Bucky had made enough effort to talk to Sam and Peggy enough for both of them to know his name and found it relieving that they would let him listen in on the two’s conversation without the need to offer a valuable opinion to the conversation.

“I’ll listen to Marvin Gaye if you listen to Frank Sinatra.” Peggy offered, moving away from the door as Miss Hill unlocked it and lead the way in, the group of students in Bucky’s year and the year above filing in and sitting in their usual seats. Bucky always went from the second row from the front and sat on the far right, with Sam and Peggy to his left. On any other normal day, this would be when Bucky would catch up on a few pages of a book he was reading, but today was different: there was a gift bag on his desk. It was only when Peggy and Sam didn’t hear the thump of Bucky’s rucksack bang on the table that they both turned to him and noticed it too. The bag was about the size of an A4 sheet of paper and was decorated with red, white and blue stripes. There was a name tag connected to the string handle that Bucky’s name on it and nothing else. 

“Early secret Santa?” Peggy suggested, but her excited tone told Bucky she knew it definitely wasn’t that.

“Wouldn’t the bag have like reindeers on it or something?” Bucky asked, almost feeling too nervous to remove the blue tissue paper that was inside the bag.

“So are you just going to stare at it or are you going to open it?” Sam questioned, eagerly shuffling his chair so both himself and Peggy were now seated either side of Bucky.

As soon as Bucky lifted his hand to remove the tissue paper, he realised he was shaking and quickly emptied the bag before anyone noticed. Bucky wished he noticed how hard he was blushing when he saw what the mysterious gift was: an army dog tag necklace that had ‘ _James B. Barnes_ ’ engraved on it.

Sam gripped his shoulder and began to laugh. “Wow, Bucky!” He exclaimed. “I didn’t know your first name was actually James!”

“The only time people call me James is like on the first day of school when they call the register before I tell them to call me Bucky.” Bucky said, almost monotone: he was staring at the necklace. But he didn’t have to look to his left to see the mischievous grin painted on Peggy’s face as she snatched the gift bag from Bucky’s part of the desk, inspecting the name tag.

“We need to find out whose hand writing this is!” She proclaimed.

“It’s probably just a prank or something…” Bucky dismissed, his anxiety rising at the sudden attention from the two.

“I don’t think someone would have got you a _personalised necklace_ as a joke, dude.” Sam pointed out. Bucky looked to him and noticed a smirk on his face different to Peggy’s, almost a knowing smirk.

“Do you have any ideas on who it might me?” Peggy asked, looking more intently at the hand writing. Bucky shook his head. “It’s so annoying, look,” Peggy continued, shoving the same tag in front of the boys’ faces, “whoever it is has written it in all caps so it’s pretty much unrecognisable.” 

“Well whoever it was,” Sam said, “they didn’t want anyone to know.”

 

“Wait so you’re saying you have a secret admirer.” Nat’s emerald eyes practically lit up when Bucky told her the news.

“I feel like our little boy is growing up!” Clint teased, nudging Nat’s shoulder before resting his head there.

“Clint I’m two months older than you.” Bucky said, causing Clint to reply by sticking out his tongue at his friend.

“Don’t change the subject!” Nat shook Clint off her shoulder and he gave a quick wink at Bucky who smiled knowingly.

Bucky looked at his hands, only realising then that he was still holding onto the necklace, letting his fingers trace over the engraving. He stopped when he reached the last letter, then paused, before flicking his eyes up in realisation.

“No one else knows I like army stuff.” He stated, looking at his two friends accusingly. They both replied with a genuinely puzzled look.

“Bucky,” Nat said, placing a hand on the brunette boy’s shoulder, “even Clint here isn’t _that_ creative when it comes to pranks. And besides, it’s not like it’s hard to know that for anyone that pays attention to you.”

“I really talk about it that much?” Bucky’s eyes widened and felt his shoulders hunch awkwardly.

“Not to mention the camo patterned tops.” Clint said, giving a shrug, nodding at the army green t-shirt Bucky was wearing underneath his black leather jacket.

“And it was in the _exact_ seat you always sit in in form?” Nat looked as Bucky for reassurance and he gave her a nervous nod.

“Should I wear it?” He asked quickly, finding himself finish tracing the engraved letters again.

Nat and Clint both replied at the same time:

“Yeah sure, why not?”

“Duh!”

“If the person who got it sees you wearing it they might reveal themselves!” Natasha continued.

 

And Bucky did wear it, for a whole week, but no one was confessing their undying love for him. He’d narrowed it down to two possible lessons that the mystery gift giver could be in: physics and maths. He knew it would be between these two lessons because where he sat in any of the others was a table that consisted of himself, Nat and Clint only, meaning that no one else was in ear shot to hear Bucky’s apparent rambling about the latest army film. Despite Bucky narrowing it down to maths or physics, he was almost certain that his ‘secret admirer’ was from the latter because there were only two people that he sat with in maths: Bruce Banner and Tony Stark. The only reason Bucky presumed that these two boys knew his name was because of it being called out during the register; he had never actually made eye contact with either of them. Now, Bucky wouldn’t normally consider himself a shy person, but rather someone who only speaks when spoken to. However, it was like their aura just made Bucky completely shut down and almost collapse in on himself. Maybe it was Tony’s oozing confidence that everyone seemed to find endearing apart from him? Or perhaps the way Bruce would be the first one to complete the work and Bucky would get paranoid that the boy would stare at his own, most likely incorrect, work? Either way, it was slowly becoming apparent to him that it would definitely be physics.

In physics, he sat with four people: Clint, Scott Lang, Wanda Maximoff and Steve Rogers. Bucky had spoken to Scott and Wanda a few times, but for some reason had never really talked to Steve and the blonde boy had seemed to make a conscious effort to converse with Bucky either. Most of their interactions consisted on unrequited stares. When Steve wasn’t looking, Bucky would find himself with his chin dopily resting on his palm, his eyes gazing upon the boy’s lightly-tanned flawless face. Bucky had never put the world ‘crush’ next to how he felt about Steve, but as he ended up spending more physics lessons in this way, he found himself blushing more furiously than usual, and Clint would _not_ let him get away with it.

“You’re looking a bit rosy there, Bucky.” Clint proclaimed, forcing Bucky to snap out of his gaze to flash a scorn at his friend. It was last lesson and Mr Coulson had already stayed off the subject, causing most of the class to stop paying attention; this didn’t mean Coulson stopped rambling on. “What?” Clint raised his voice a little as he felt a sharp kick from his brunette friend under the table. Bucky desperately tried to tone down the redness of his face when he felt Steve turn his head towards the middle of the table. The russet haired boy gave his friend a pleading look and he nodded, immediately coming to the rescue. “So, Scott,” he started, to which the short, spikey haired boy turned into the table eagerly, “tell us how you _exactly_ managed to break into Fury’s office to change your school report?” That was all Clint needed to say to completely kill the silence of the table and Scott spent the rest of the lesson telling the others of his elaborate mission. Bucky spent the rest of the lesson staring at Steve, and this time it was like he wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore; he rested his chin on both palms, frequently exhaling longingly when the blonde boy’s sapphire eyes lit up with excitement as he got invested in Lang’s story.

 

One week more and still nothing, one week more and Bucky still persistently wore the dog tag necklace. It has been exactly two weeks since the gift showed up in his form room when Bucky was upstairs waiting for Nat and Clint to meet him there, coming from their P.E. lesson, when he realised that Steve was alone.  

Bucky felt a twitch in his left leg: almost every muscle in his body wanted to go over to him. But what the hell would he say? _Hello! You probably can’t remember my name, but I stare at you all the time in physics!_ Just by saying it in his head made Bucky squirm and it was when he saw Steve get up and walk closer to him that the former boy’s heart began to pound so loudly that he was surprised everyone in the room couldn’t hear it.

“Hey.” His voice was like the warmest summer breeze and Bucky felt like his stomach was doing somersaults.

“Hi.” Bucky replied, his voice wobbling a little.

“Look, Buck, um,” there was some hesitation in the boy’s blue eyes as he sat down next to Bucky and he felt his body tense when he realised their knees were touching, but he didn’t dare to move a muscle. “I know you stare at me in physics.”

Bucky’s heart sunk a million feet down. “Uh, well I wasn’t really staring _at you_.” He tried desperately to cover up his once reddening again cheeks. “I just, ah, stare into space a lot, you know?” He made a pathetic attempt to act natural and instead let out a nervous laugh.

“It’s okay,” Steve reassured. The way he looked at Bucky made him melt. “I kinda do it too.”

“Wait what?”

“You know I wouldn’t have told you this unless I had noticed you have been wearing the necklace for so long.”

“Wait, do you mean-”

“Yeah.” Bucky wanted to fall apart when he saw Steve duck his head in embarrassment.

“But why me? Why wait so long?” Bucky tried to keep it cool, but slowly and surely a huge grin spread across his face.

“Let’s just say you were my little mission.” Bucky began to feel weak when the blonde boy gave him a wink and as the boy’s carried on talking, Steve’s fingers slowly laced with Bucky’s.   

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys liked this one! I just fancied doing a little stucky ficlet with this sort of plot and decided a needed a tinyyy break from Agent Bromanov, but never fear! I plan to get writing the next chapter pretty soon and hopefully a christmas themed one! As always, kudos and comments are much appreciated!! 
> 
> Instagram: @b.uckyboo


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